Nnamdi Azikiwe

Benjamin Nnamdi Azikiwe (16 November 1904-11 May 1996) was the leader of Nigeria from 16 November 1960 to 16 January 1966 (Governor-General from 1960 to 1963, President from 1963 to 1966), succeeding James Wilson Robertson and preceding Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi.

Biography
Nnamdi Azikiwe was born in Zungeru, Nigeria on 16 November 1904, and he studied in the United States at Howard University, Lincoln University, and Pennsylvania University. He became a successful newspaper editor and owner both in Nigeria and Ghana, and he founded the nationalist National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons in 1944. His newspaper articles in the West African Pilot exerted a powerful influence throughout the 1940s and 1950s on emerging Nigerian nationalism. He led his party in the constitutional conferences leading up to independence, and he served as Premier of the Eastern Region from 1954 to 1959. Azikiwe became the country's first Governor-General in 1960, and he became its president when it became a republic in 1963. Azikiwe was deosed in a 1966 military coup by Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi, and he supported the attempt to create an independent state of Biafra due to his Ibo sympathies. He sought a compromise when it became clear that the federal forces were winning the Nigerian Civil War, and he would later lead the Nigerian People's Party, launching an unsuccessful bid for the presidency in 1979. Azikiwe died in 1996.